Pan

Turning the camera horizontally from a fixed point. The eye sweeping a room without stepping into it.

The pan turns the camera's head without moving its feet: a horizontal sweep from a fixed station, the eye crossing a room, a horizon, a line of faces. It is the most conversational of camera moves, closest to what a standing person actually does.

Fixed feet give the pan its honesty, one continuous space, surveyed, and its constraints: too fast and the image smears into judder; the classic use ends on meaning, the sweep that lands on the thing the scene needed found. Whip that speed on purpose and the blur itself becomes a cut. Panoramas on a page scroll by the same logic, sideways survey, fixed viewer.